Haven’t these Uzbek imams heard that Islam is tolerant and respects Christianity and Christians? They are demonstrating an unusual amount of misunderstanding of Islam. Have they been listening to greasy Islamophobes? Perhaps Bishop McManus of Worcester should jet over to Tashkent to revive the “Muslim-Christian dialogue.”
“Under pressure from imams, Christians cannot be buried in state-owned cemeteries,” Asia News, April 28, 2014 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Tashkent (AsiaNews/Forum18) – With the support of local authorities, some Uzbek imams have denied the families of non-Muslims the right to bury their loved ones in state-owned cemeteries.
Three cases involving Protestants have been reported in recent weeks, raising questions about religious freedom in Uzbekistan, this according to the Forum 18, a news service that documents violations of religious freedom in Central Asia.
The three people involved are all former Muslims who converted to Protestant Christianity. In each case, their families were not allowed to bury them alongside other relatives.
In Central Asian culture, being buried together with family members and with the participation of the local community are important.
Although Forum 18 reported the first case only a few days ago, the latter dates back to 9 April. It concerns Gayrat Buriyev, 68-year-old Christian, originally from a village near the capital Tashkent.
The local imam refused to let his relatives bury him in the state-owned cemetery, repeatedly cursing the deceased’s family. When the latter appealed to local government authorities, they were unsuccessful.
The ban stems from the deceased’s conversion to Christianity. Cemeteries are state-owned, but converts cannot be buried along with Muslims, the imam said.
“The imam cursed the family for becoming Christians and insulted them with unquotable expressions, branding them unclean and defiled infidels,” local sources said, adding that he was “acting based on Islamic Sharia Law”.
Complaints by relatives were to no avail. Although they insisted that Uzbekistan is (or ought to be) a secular state and cemeteries are state-owned, the local imam, claimed that the one in question was “a Muslim cemetery” and Christians are not allowed.
Two similar cases were reported in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region in north-western Uzbekistan.
Local officials forced the families of two Protestant women who died in February to bury them in a Russian Orthodox cemetery, after the local imam banned them from the state-owned cemetery.
The local Muslim leader, who was instrumental in this case as well, said, “Those who accepted other religions may not be buried in the same cemetery with Muslims.”
In a country where about 88 per cent of the population is Sunni Muslim with 8 per cent Christians, religious freedom is under tight government controls.
Although only the possession of religious literature that is extremist in nature and incites “religious hatred” is deemed illegal, the judiciary often destroys material seized in homes after receiving “opinion” from “experts” for whom any book about religion is extremist.
Saleem Smith says
Attempt to openly proselytize any non-Islamic religion in any Islamic majority country on earth and you are taking your life into your hands and asking for death.
Salah says
Indeed, Muslims live in a huge dark prison from which they cannot escape. But things are rapidly changing.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2014/01/egyptian-muslims-tear-up-quran.html
SKevin says
Maylasia: Muslims not encouraged to use ‘RIP’, says National Fatwa Council
http://news.malaysia.msn.com/tmi/muslims-not-encouraged-to-use-rip-says-national-fatwa-council
Reality Check says
I am not surprised they are not encouraged to do it – after all, Islam says nothing about peace after death. You’re either going to Heaven where you can’t get rid of virgins assaulting you right and left OR you’re going to Hell where you burn for ever.
Kepha says
I look at the bright side. How many Uzbek and Karakalpak Christians were there a century ago, or even fifty year ago? Sure, there were Christians among the ethnic Russian, Polish, Volksdeutsch, and other European ethnicities settled in Central Asia, but the indigenous population was untouched.
And before I throw too many rocks at the Uzebk government, I note that my own country’s courts are demanding that anyone who does business in the USA has to sear conscience and accept the “normalcy” of sexual perversion. Our courts are so busy finding new rights in the penumbras of the Constitution to advance the agendae of their political clients that they’re trampling on plain, clearly written First Amendment rights.
dumbledoresarmy says
Seconding your observation re Uzbek and Karakalpak Christians.
This is happening right across the Central Asian “stans”.
I get the newsletters from “Barnabas Fund”. And since about 1986 I have been using, pretty much daily, an encyclopaedic “prayer guide” called “Operation World” (I’ve worn out three successive print editions of same, as it is updated regularly, and am onto the fourth) which combines carefully-cross-checked sober historic and demographic info about the nations and ethnic groups of the world, with what Christians call “prayer points”. I *also* support the Bible Society, which puts out regular newsletters giving information about the assorted translations they are producing or have just completed and how these are being received. It should be noted that none of these three organisations are prone to boasting or exaggerating; they try to find out *exactly* what the facts are, about the church in each country they cover.
Both Barnabas and the compilers of “Operation World”, and various updates from the Bible Society, tell me that in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan there are now vernacular translations of the Christian Scripture (in some cases, the whole Bible, in others the New Testament but the translation of the rest of the Bible is rapidly progressing) in the main indigenous language of each republic; and that these are being read, and that there are in each of those countries, now, indigenous Christian groups made up entirely of apostates from Islam. They number in the thousands; and their number continues to grow; they are forming families, and raising their children in their new-found faith.
I discovered from a Bible Society newsletter, a few years ago, that one of the people who helped translate the New Testament into Azeri is an ex-Muslim; her husband converted first – subsequently evincing a dramatic, lasting and much-appreciated improvement in his demeanour and conduct toward his wife and children – and then she (rather than rejecting him) chose to ditch Islam and instead embrace the faith that had transformed her husband into a man so much more pleasing to live with.
lebel says
To be fair, this is not exclusive to Islam. There is also a prohibition on burying jews with non-jews in Jewish cemetaries (not that that would bother anyone here).
Mirren10 says
”To be fair, this is not exclusive to Islam. There is also a prohibition on burying jews with non-jews in Jewish cemetaries … ”
The article refers to **state** cemeteries, not **muslim** cemeteries.
Therefore, these mohammedans are exercising mohammedan **supremacy** in preventing Christians from being buried in **state-owned cemeteries**.
Get it, now ?
boakai ngombu says
“The imam cursed the family for becoming Christians and insulted them with unquotable expressions, branding them unclean and defiled infidels,” local sources said, adding that he was “acting based on Islamic Sharia Law”.
imams must always throw cowpies. these wonderful people have in mind no other way to act . they are poison and pollute.
they’re worried so about seeming corruption to the newly dead brothers that they will not understand the corruption of death, since they are walking dead.
Jesus said: “whoever believes in me, though he die, yet, shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die….” … likely these words got burned when the other Korans were destroyed …. they’re heard frequently around, much to imams’ disgust.
I hope the Christians there took the corpse inside its burial cloth and laid it faceside up facing the rising sun, in anticipation of Resurrection Day, when all shall be raised. But, on that Day, many will only hear CONDEMNED and off they shall go to the cesspool reserved for Satan and demons and imams and others. There, they will not hear songs of thanks and praise offered to the Unique God.
paradox of paradox, the Unchangeable and Omnipresent, shall have absented Himself completely from that cesspool, filled with the smell of death and having one large room with a boombox broadcasting calls to prayer to weepers in anguish that no Merciful and Beneificent Lord (if they even remember that) is there. and as they bend and contort in prayerful attitudes they shall only smell dung and vomit (unless they change their thinking and acting and hear Jesus before their demise).
xyz says
wonder wat would happen if Christians refused burial to muslims in their countries??